At the dawn of time, in the age of mythology, great primordial beasts roamed the countryside, battling each other for dominion. Locked in their vaults, angels and their descendents performed cruel hybridization experiments to create a perfect being capable of reconquering the heavens, ever watchful for the demons sealed away in their care. It was into this savage world that the great civilizations of Man, Elf, Dwarf, and Merrow found themselves thrust.
As they engaged in friendly competition, sharing technologies and magics, each civilization became aware that there were other factions on the margins. From the nearby plains watched feisty goblins, hobgoblins marching in lock step, and sahuagin plaguing the shallow waters. In the local caves lurked skulking kobolds, carefree halflings, hissing lizards, and angry technologists protected by automatons. And worse still, in the deep oceans lurked another civilization - naga, who mercilessly extinguished incursions from goodmen and snatchers alike. Nonetheless, each of the three other factions, as they came to be known, continued to expand across the land.
While the horn of progress sounded on, a few lucky individuals made breakthroughs in the magical arts. So-called 'sorcerers' were born with magical gifts - aether, fire, healing, or darkness - while 'wizards' studied into the depths of the night to master the same. Each aided their factions, but a few rogue individuals discovered the very secrets of magic itself, bequethed by the gods or forces far more fell, erecting dark towers and amassing sinister armies of bone, shadow, or silence.
In these turbulent times, as each faction competed for ever-more power, for guns, magic, and steel, someone dug too deep. History does not record whether it was the dwarves or the goblins, but the passage they created unleashed hordes of orcs, themselves fleeing a far greater doom: demons, the discarded legions of the gods.
During this age of calamity, the story's ending is left for you. Will the united do-gooders push back against the encroaching tide? Or will orcs join the other snatchers in time to seize the momentum? Perhaps chaos will reign, as the relentless Naga or isolated secretkeepers will exploit the shifting tides of power and capture the realm. Or perhaps fate will rest in the hands of a lowly tribe of kobolds, dark gnomes, or a hobbit...
Someday, the conflict must come to an end. Only the most non-magical of creatures will survive: men, mundane as mud, but occasionally bearing the mark of another races' lineage. Men, wielding guns, magic, and steel as they set off into the wilds to finally put an end to the time of troubles. After all, so-called GOOD and EVIL are just two facets of the same twisted, mocking gods.
The choice is yours.
Welcome to the High Fantasy mod and modpack for Dwarf Fortress. Promo Image:
Sample Region:
Highfantasy is a mod layered atop of vanilla Dwarf Fortress that expand the vertical and horizontal scope of the game.We incorporated elements of Tolkien-esque – and more modern – high fantasy, while remaining true to the vision of vanilla Dwarf Fortress. It’s balanced and bug-free, with each feature is designed to play well with every other feature.
This mod is not in development – it is complete, and there are no more features planned, just additional balancing based on played feedback. And, HighFantasy is completely standalone. You should install it on a fresh download of dwarf fortress with no Lazy Newb Pack or other installers. This also means the mod can be updated to new versions of D.F. almost instantly!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Download 1.5.08 Today!-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Installation instructions:
-Download a fresh copy of Dwarf Fortress 50.04 or higher from the bay12 games website:
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/-Unzip the download and drop the entire folder into [root] -> mods.
-Move the file "embark_profiles" into [root] -> prefs. You may need to create the prefs folder
-During worldgen, add Highfantasy, and deselect "Vanilla Creatures" "Vanilla Manterials" "Vanilla Bodies" for now.
Guide to modifying your copy of Highfantasy:
this postMini-mods:
"Big Cats and Lap Dogs." A standalone and completely 47.05 vanilla file that introduces two more common_domestic creatures, forest cats and lap dogs, which perform the functions of dogs and cats, respectively, in case you really prefer one species or the other. They are 100% vanilla and in their own file,
creature_highfantasy_domestic, so can be used with pretty much any other mod. (Please extract the file from the Highfantasy download for now)
"Slimes of Armok: God of Splorch." A standalone 47.05 minimod which adds slimes and slime farming to Dwarf Fortress, based on (but not limited to a direct reproduction of) Stardew Valley and other video game sources, which fill unique design spaces (renewable resources, but not for iron). They are mostly vanilla and in their own files, creature_highfantasy_slime + material_template_slime + inorganic_highfantasy_slime + reaction_highfantasy_slime & item_tool_highfantasy (which is required by the base mod).
-Any civ can capture and tame slimes in the second cavern layer.
-Slimes are not trainable, but breed rapidly and birth fully formed
-Slimes can be butchered for unique returns or for the "slime" building material.
-Across four subspecies, there are 10 color families, 48 castes, and 114 attainable colors ranging from common to rare.
-Slime color families inherit their colors genetically and have unique drops.
-Slimes are milkable for (minimal) passive income, and 1 in 1111 "prismatic" slimes are milkable for candy byproducts.
By the way, I authored
The New, Definitive Guide to RGB Slime Ranching in Stardew Valley over on reddit.
"BlackPowder Firearms: Reloaded." Revised for compatibility with mods outside of Highfantasy. (Download coming soon).
- More of the consistent dwarf fortress gameplay you love, including 20 new semi/megabeasts
- 14 unique, balanced, different-feeling civilizations trading and competing in 4 fleshed-out factions
- Better endgame hazards ranging from toxic materials and diseased creatures to siege machines to disguised impostors and powerful bloodlines
- Balanced, rewarding vertical progression systems that D.F. hasn’t reached yet – guns, magic, and more
In total, the features are:
1. "Raw changes you can't do without"
2a 14 Classic high-fantasy civilizations with factions and distinct features
2.b More interesting underground civs
2.c Reorganization of the caverns; Dinos; Eldrazi horrors; More fantasy creatures everywhere
2.d Make animal-people above-ground more interesting/rarer
2.e A Divine civ to make divine language and materials see usage
3a Flesh out existing civ gameplay
3.b lineage system for playable tieflings, aasimar, etc without ip-specific names
3.c Catapults, Gunpowder, Orc Sieges
3.d Better adventure mode
3.e Hazardous materials, disguised creatures, and diseased creatures
4. A complete and consistent magic system to complement Necromancy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Inspired by D.F., this mod feels a little more mysterious than others. There are no I.P. based creature or ability names! You don’t “Cast the Fireball spell”, which is inherently DnD, you “stretch out your hand and project a ball of magical fire. You aren’t a “Tiefling”, you’re a “human with touches of fiendish ancestry.” There aren’t “Gold Dragons”, there are just Dragons, and you won’t know what they do until they’re eating your corpse. And so on. Dwarf Fortress eschews limiting I.P. based names in favor of procedural generation, so we eschew I.P based names until D.F. can out-do us. When D.F. adds procedural magic, we’ll take ours out. When D.F. adds procedural dragons, we’ll get rid of ours.
There’s one more thing. This mod promises to not invalidate the information you can get just by reading the wiki. There are almost no changes to existing creatures, items, or even systems that would make it so that reading a wiki article about that thing is not helpful to you. Short swords still have edged cuts, giant giraffes are still in the savage biomes, and candy still comes with the circus. (Two exceptions: animalmen have been moved to good biomes, and the third cavern layer has been squeezed up to layer two.)
more consistent general gameplay. In fort mode, this means you can do logical things like use dragonscales as leather and giant insect chitin as bone, and a few surface stones like Flint and Chert are strong enough to make weapons. In adventure mode, you can pick more plant growths, repair your armor, and make lots of interesting items that would help your quest, while not becoming a total lone craftsman. And, there is a reasonably small list of civilized, magical, and animal people to choose from in gameplay. In both modes, there are many more interesting fantasy creatures, both intelligent, friendly, wild, and deadly, almost all of which are confined to non-Mundane biomes for balance. There are training weapons for more skill types, domestic animal men including catgirls, giant domestics and giant pond vermin, magical creatures like griffons, a few dinosaur groups and many extinct mammals, and veterinarians to heal animals. There are also more real-world animals, from seagulls to meerkats to Sulawesi cave pigs, which kobolds like to domesticate.
Although there are many new magical creatures, Non-intelligent Non-megabeast fantasy creatures are confined to non-mundane biomes (Savage, Evil, or Good), with the sole exceptions being skales, drakes, and elementals. So like in DF, in mundane biomes you'll have mostly mundane wildlife.
AnimalMen have been moved to Good biomes in keeping with the mod story. This means much more diversity in Savage biomes. They also have standardized armor sizes - only eight sizes to choose from instead of 300, four of which fit humans and/or dwarves!
This mod has 14 of them, and that number is no coincidence! In Vanilla D.F., there are 4 types of civilization: Normal Men/Elves/Dwarves, Evil Goblins, Thieving Kobolds, and an unused super evil faction. In Highfantasy, there are 4 Normal, 4 Evil, 4 Thieving, and 2 Superbad civs. There are also 2 different powerlevels of hidden, underground civilization, and finally, animal people were rebalanced and moved from SAVAGE to GOOD biomes. The most popular animal people from things like Magic the Gathering and DnD are almost always playable – Tigermen and Hyenamen (gnolls) and such.
Here are the civilizations:
4Normal: Dwarves The same dwarves as ever, the only ones to mine adamantine. They have access to the second highest amount of reactions and materials of all races, and are balanced.
Human* Industrious surface dwellers who can make boulders and logs with high efficiency, and the masters of primitive gunpowder. Embark with your Lord and expand!
Elves* The forest dwelling civilization can grow useful wood from seeds, and can even “bloom” metals into Mythril, which is sharper than steel. Biologically immortal.
Mer These “sea-elves” use caught fish to grow coral and seaweed for use as building materials, can make unique weapons out of native metals and jade, and control weather.
4Snatcher: Orcs The master siegers ride into battle on worgs with huge steel weapons and powerful siege machines, and live in dark towers ruled by demons. They also get a bonus to burning trees into charcoal.
Goblins* These wild creatures live in primitive tribes, fending off attacks from feral goblins and adopting rival tribe members. They build with bone and drink booze distilled from meat, and many of their pets spread debilitating diseases.
Hobgoblins These larger goblinoids march in lock-step with huge armies, and apply the human advantages of limited gunpowder and efficient building to the bad team. They have mastered the creation of the ancient alloy Orichalcum, which is harder than steel.
Sahuagin These wave-dwelling baddies have come to land, accompanied by vicious landsharks, and they take no prisoners.
4Thief: Kobold* These adorable dograts live in sprawling caves milking their goats and pigs to brew fermented drinks, while salvaging the scraps of other races and sometimes obeying a dragon overlord. Just be careful not to milk a diseased beak dog or worg!
Dark Gnomes This spiteful race lives in mountain fortresses, where they build golems to do their labor and battle. They don’t use weapons, but are the only thief civ to use magic.
Lizardmen and Halfings You’ll be hard-pressed to find one of these hidden, non-playable civilizations, who mostly wish to escape the din of the world. One is offensive, the other defensive.
2Superbad: Naga The slavers of the world, Naga take neither pet nor prisoner, and are exceptionally deadly fighters with both natural poison and mastery of weapons, magic, and their signature harpoon guns.
Half-Angel These descendants of the celestials are the “godmode” civilization, who can do everything anyone else can – but they WILL still attack you for a late-game challenge. Furthermore, they have access to animal hybridization magics that elude all other races, being able to summon great beasts at their labs. Half-angels can repopulate the world with forgotten beasts, Titans, Night creatures, animalmen, demons, and just about anything else, and can forge Divine metals and materials.
Finally, every race in Highfantasy has unique attack conditions, pack animals, permitted reactions, profession names, speech files, religious idols, and even noble titles tastefully inspired by the real world. No more 5 copies of the human civilization; you will definitely feel the difference.
(Dwarf = Medieval Britain+Scotland. Human = Medieval China. Mer = Aztecs. Goblin = NE Native American. Hobgoblin = Roman Empire. Orc = Mongols. Kobold = Primitive Man. Lizal = Medieval India. Angels = Muslim Caliphates. Fiends (optional) = Babylon / Sumerian. Elves, Sahuagin, DkGnomes, and Naga = fantasy inspired.
One quirk of the mod - in keeping with dF's "ages" idea, there are absolutely NO outsider controllable creatures except for Humans. Many creatures are playable from their tribes or when they join civs, but once they die out, they die out. In the end, only humanity is guaranteed.
Every system included in the mod is designed to balance every other one. There are no “infinite reactions” without a cost. Weapons from Mod B aren’t broken compared to Mod A (thanks to Sver Combat Revised), etc, except for guns, which are more powerful to balance their detailed unlocking. Even wizardly studies cost time and materials.
Another sort of exception is the mod’s lineage system. This mod introduces the idea that creatures can be magically-touched in their ancestry, ie, a tiefling. But in the spirit of dwarf fortress, we don’t use those special words. You can’t tell a tiefling ( “outsider” in dnd terms, but that means something different to DF players) by its name, or its appearance; you have to check its actual description. There are Angel, Demon, Fey, Shadow, and Elemental tieflings, and they appear in all 4 Normal and some other civilizations. You can get a Tiefling fort migrant, fort invader, fresh adventurer, or even adventure mode npc.
Finally, new civilization-level hazards await. For the individual miner, certain caustic materials underground can lead to debilitating conditions, while diseased versions of certain underground creatures can plague the entire fort. In the third cavern layer await horrific, amalgamated creatures; sauropods stalk the savage wilds; and new megabeasts roam the skies, some of them with unique and deadly abilities. Siege weapons, which are creatures much like wagons, offer new threats from invaders. Combined with the lineage system, tricksome creatures force the player to always check creature descriptions and not just names.
Highfantasy introduces multiple vertical progression systems which works by gathering materials and learning recipes over time, much like adamantine in the vanilla game.
For the fighters among us, megabeasts have beating hearts which hold the cures to various difficult ailments including vampirism, old age, or sterility. Meanwhile, toxic creatures have bulbous venom sacs which adventures can extract to create contact poisons for subterfuge and sabotage.
Guns, the strongest mundane weapons, are a complicated mechanism that requires assembling a lock, a stock, and a barrel, plus gunpowder and bullets. All their reactions are confined to new workshops and are intended to be an endgame weapon for Human, Dwarves, Hobgoblins, Orcs, and Naga.
Highfantasy also introduces a balanced magic system loosely based on Dark Souls. (Spellcrafts mod) There are 5 main schools of magic besides necromancy: Aetherial, Miracles, Pyromancy, Polymorphy, and Hexing. Each of these schools of magic can be studied and passed from student to teacher as a secret in worldgen, OR, they can be studied meticulously in adventure or fort mode as a “wizard” of one of the schools. Finally, there are two more secrets that are much rarer: the Shadowmancers, who raise corpses as shadows and build towers, and the Order of Silencers, who work to expunge all magic. They will fight back against your magical learning. Good luck surviving the endgame in this challenging world.
Magic in Highfantasy takes inspiration mainly from the Dark Souls series and in part from popular fantasy ideas. Highfantasy divides magic into multiple “sources” and “schools.” When designing a new fantasy magic system, it’s important for there to be a reasoning or a mythos as to why the magic works the way it does, or how its schools have come to be. Here, the magic mythos is summarized in the following arcane diagram, which any good summoner would find located on their planar tomes:
The magic mythos of Highfantasy:
Magic is an innate part of the world. Perhaps magic is dwindling, as evidenced by the emergence of so-called Pristinely Ungifted humans, but for now, it exists in wild places and manifests in mysterious ways. Pure magic, represented by the central faded blue dot, is known as “aetherial” or “aether” magic. Like a prism, this aether magic warps into one of the four classical elements - fire, water, earth(/poison/acid), and air(/lightning). When magic is especially concentrated, “elementals” appear, humanoids made entirely out of one or more of the classical elements, or “aetherials” made of pure magic itself. Some creatures, most prominently the five castes of dragon and four types of genie, are also strongly associated with an elemental school.
In Dwarf Fortress, the gods are mysterious and otherworldly beings. Strangely, they are associated with both good and evil, heaven and hell; they created angels to guard their vaults, but also released demons into the depths. The gods have their own magic, called “divine” magic, represented by the golden triangle. This magic is focused on life itself, mostly involving healing and protecting effects, and secondarily in magnified lightning magics.
As the gods pursue their heavenly squabbles and earthly interventions, they interact with the elemental magic innate to the world to provide mortals with the “gifts” of three empowered schools. First, for reasons yet unknown, the gods created demons out of elemental fire. From these demons flow the school of Pyromancy, represented by the red locus, and empowered fire magics.. Second, to populate the world, the gods created plants and animals. From these natural creatures flow the school of Polymorphy, represented by the green locus, and empowered earth magics. Finally, the preserve the mortals and their balance of power, the gods created Necromancy, represented by the dark blue locus, and empowered ice magics. Necromancy and Polymorphy are known as the “Creation” arc, Polymorphy and Pyromancy as the “Change” arc, and Pyromancy and Necromancy as the “Destruction” arc of the gods’ wills.
Summoners who have discovered this planar diagram are able to call forth beings associated with any part of existence using rituals of invocation. The school of Summoning magic is represented by the black circle that unites all the rest.
All of these magics take place in a single plane of existence and reality, but beyond reality itself lies a dark force of eldritch beings. These beings wield a magic known as “dementia”, for it warps mind and flesh into horrors beyond belief. When eldritch beings emerge from the realities beyond, they bring their own magic with them, represented by the line that cuts into the circular plane of magic. Naturally, the gods have attempted to interact with this horrific magic, creating the secret of Shadowmancy and of unnatural births. Mortals, too, seek to study and replicate these magics, if only for their own protection, but can only recreate so-called “shadow” magic as a pale reflection. Finally, where dementia magic meets and corrupts aetherial magic, only a void remains, known as the school of Silence.
Rumors speak of another type of foreign being that deals with innate magics known as “psyionics,” but evidence of this magic is limited throughout the world.
the third post in this thread for a full how-to of each distinct civilization and tips on many areas of gameplay!
So what did you actually do? Why are you releasing this mod/pack?Well, to put it simply, this is how I want to play DF, and I want others to share that.
Highfantasy represents a collection of mods that has been balanced for years to play perfectly together. In addition to the tens of thousands of lines of code that are completely and utterly my own (such as for the mod's unique Merrow/Sea-Elf civilization), I also wrote hundreds of thousands of lines of compatability code - to balance weapons, systems, and things and make the systems consistent and cohesive. Sometimes this involved incredible amounts of grunt work - I probably wrote a thousand lines of code just adding kobold milk reactions to creatures from other mods, or venom sac reactions outside of Adventurecraft. Dwarvemon and Primal each required reviewing a million lines. Other times it meant a lot of design thinking to make sure the play experience was integral - such as redoing the entire magic system from the ground up.
Considered and discarded. Class in things like DnD or your favorite MMO are actually magic systems, and they're actually super limiting. Dwarf mods that add classes usually work either by introducing secrets which teach a bunch of magic interactions (even for non-"magic" things like barbarians having battle rage), or by introducing fake "races" like "Dwarf that's a Druid." Neither of these systems are elegant, and it doesn't make sense to me to call "perfect archer arrow shots" and "barbarian rages" spells. Instead, Highfantasy - like Dwarf Fortress itself - enables each character to be completely free to study whatever they want. You can be a Dwarf Sorcerer who uses magic with a pyromancy focus and is a damn fine archer and crime scene investigator, all in one - no fake races or extra secrets required!
Tilesets are not supported for Highfantasy in DF Classic. Highfantasy stands on its own without any helper mods or modloades. Graphics for steam have been created by multiple artists, who are all credited there.
Highfantasy is not designed for compatibility, and is self-balanced, but of course I encourage your creativity. Here are some observations.
Legends Viewer: Yes, using "the old way" not "the DF hack way"
Any mod that does not edit raw files, such as ZM5's Lands of Duality or Splint's Extended: Yes, but there will be small errorlog errors, that won't matter.
Any mod that is already "digested" into Highfantasy, including ZM5's Lurks Below or Spellcrafts: NO! This will cause major bugs including list-shift errors.
Any mod that relies upon DFHACK: NO! Not supported, not recommended, unsure if bugs.
Any LazyNewbPack: NO! This will cause minor graphical errors.
Yes! But please be careful; it's hard to detangle my work from the many other authors involved. Look for the -SI- or - SI - codetags to know it's my work. In particular, I'd love to see my Merrow and Naga make their way into other peoples' worlds! Just please, credit me and the other mod authors wherever relevant.
The blackpowder mod is an exception, since I rebuilt it from the ground up from Jake's work. Please contact before using.
In general, be sure to contact me so I can check out what you've done! That leads to healthy and collaborative relationships.
This mod:
is an alternative to existing big conversion mods that
does not require DFHack or other utilities
This mod:
-is "Belgian Vanilla", trying to imitate the vanilla DF vision and play
-is well-tested with an empty errorlog
-is extremely easy to update with new DF updates
-explicitly and painstakingly credits the work of other mod authors
This mod:
-is balanced for a great play experience
-is feature complete, except for graphics and language work to be added over time.
*Any proceeds will be set aside and used to allocate time to update this mod for Steam
Thank you for playing and enjoy the mod! And thanks to the all the first-year testers:
Atkana
PlumpHelmetMan
Slots
voliol
DwarfStar
Sanguis
VABritto
Chbost
FiveBalesofHay
Ramiel. (special thanks)
Paranatural
Crashy_McGee
TheLastVegan
Highfantasy is also on
Steam Discord Reddit If you enjoy the content of Highfantasy, please consider supporting me on the dedicated Patreon page. The patreon will be used exclusively in relation to adding steam graphics. Link:
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